For the Who Dat Nation these past two years, watching Brees at work has largely been a matter of building a memory bank, filling it with all sorts of touchdown passes, long ones and short ones, the kind that finally brought us the impossible Super Bowl dream.

What made Monday night's memories so special was the dream endured on an evening it appeared the clock, horror of horrors, had struck 12 for No. 9.

The memories were mixed.

Gregg Williams' defense was winning its way into the postseason.

Brees was not.

Brees was throwing two interceptions to defensive linemen.

The first was returned for a touchdown to give the Falcons a 14-10 lead.

The second, almost moments later, would have given the Falcons another touchdown, had Brees not made a shoestring tackle.

Those were the memories.

Dark ones.

For Brees, the darkest was the first pick, one No. 9 will probably file away as the worst decision he ever made under duress.

As Brees came to the sideline, after handing the Falcons a four-point lead, I remember the look on his face.

There was no panic in the eyes.

The eyes were of a creature in the forest on the prowl for something to eat.

It reminded me of what Deuce McAllister once said about his Saints teammate.

"Drew never, ever loses focus,'' said Deuce. "He puts the good, and the bad, behind him and goes on.''

Among all of Monday night's bad, there was plenty of good, if you assessed the situation.

The Falcons were coming at Brees with an assortment of blitz packages, like a bunch of red-shirted kamikazes.

So why was Brees, who attempted 49 passes, only sacked one time?

Credit his quick feet to his excellence on the tennis court. He used them to escape the clutches of blitzing Falcons who came clean, who missed at least four clear shots.

In the midst of it all, there was the picture of Brees in the shotgun formation, with Reggie Bush at his side, telling Bush to take care of "that guy," someone Bush got a piece of, allowing his quarterback to throw for a first down.

That was good.

What also was good was the 25-yard touchdown pass Brees threw to Marques Colston to wipe out a 14-10 Falcons lead with 12 minutes left.

What was bad was the illegal motion flag on Jermon Bushrod that erased it.

But the quarterback, as McAllister remembers him, never loses focus.

The time would come when Brees helped repay his defense by engineering the payoff drive that began with a huge third-and-11 completion from the Saints' 9-yard line to Lance Moore and ended with a 6-yard fastball to Jimmy Graham.

The time would come when Brees and Pierre Thomas would make spectators of the Atlanta offense as the clock ran out.

Who knows what the immediate future holds.

Will the Saints win a first-round game against the Seattle-St. Louis winner and find themselves back at the Georgia Dome next month?